Iraq oil production was higher this year than since before Saddam Hussein took power. The problem: getting it out of the country.

Iraqi oil fields pumped 3.6 million barrels of crude a day on average in February, 50% more than four years ago. That beat—if only for a month—the country's annual-output record, 3.5 million barrels a day, in 1979 during Iraq's petroleum heyday.